What are you talking about? There are plenty of laws against copyright infringement. They’re difficult to enforce because of how easy it is to do, and how inconclusive the evidence often is, but this is not the fault of lawyers. Do you suggest that lawyers ought to be letting the authorities run roughshod over standards of evidence in order to secure more convictions? Again, a terrifying prospect.
Even accepting this at face value, how does it prove that all lawyers are intrinsically naughty? And if it’s a blatantly unjust bit of law, why hasn’t it been fixed?
No idea what you’re talking about here. Again, though, what’s this got to do with lawyers? Sounds more and more like your problem is shitty law. Are you voting for morons, perchance? Wait, don’t answer that.
Probably, but the solution is to identify and progressively eliminate them, not demand that lawyers (who, remember, you think are evil) decide cases right at the start on the basis of some intangible uber-law, and refuse to represent anyone who passes muster. How can you possibly think this will work? If we, as humans, failed to write a completely watertight legal system given hundreds of thousands of man-years of work, and engaging many of the finest legal minds in history, how do you expect a single lawyer to be able to know at a glance what is and isn’t “right” (per the Mosier definition), without recourse to a single articulable legal standard?
I’m not playing around. Of course there are unethical people who try to exploit the law, just as there are unethical people who content themselves with simply breaking it. This should, as far as possible, be tackled by making better law. But it proves nothing about the intrinsic horribleness of lawyers.
You, however, are arguing that all lawyers are evil because in any given case, one party is wrong and another is right, and that anyone who represents the former is a Bad Man. Quite apart from the ludicrous simplicity of this outlook, it betrays a complete unwillingness to think about how the system works, or indeed could ever work.
Lawyers run for office because their training and interests are intricately related to government. This is like saying that there are too many architects designing buildings. Why shouldn’t they? If you think there should be more non-lawyers in office then go out and persuade non-lawyers to seek office.
And how is this evidence that lawyers suck? Ultimately, there were members of the public who wanted laws like this.
Legislators would make such declarations if their constituents didn’t want them. And where’s the evidence that pro forma stuff like this actually distracts people?
This is clearly a crackpot argument. There is no validity to choosing three criminal cases based solely on their notoriety and drawing a statistical conclusion from it.
While this might be an egregious case, it strikes me as statistically insignificant.
Your second sentence doesn’t follow from the first one.
Again, the point here is that the general public thinks the death penalty is swell.
I don’t believe that abuse is rampant. Cases coming out in ways you disagree with doesn’t constitute abuse.
Whether or not this is advisable has nothing to do with whether lawyers are good or bad. Personally, I believe that people should be allowed to elect whom they want. Term limits are anti-democratic. Furthermore, having a judge who is allowed to keep his seat for life is actually a protection against shenanigans.
It does not cost money to allow a decision to be published and cited. Private parties bear the publication costs and would make more money if more were published. It does take more effort to write it better, but not only precedential opinions should be well written, all should be. Writing “may not be cited” on the top of opinions only means that more ink is used. I usually find “ordered unpublished” opinions to be contrary to existing law and a way for the Court of Appeal to have two standards of justice.
In the hopes that you are not being intentionally obstuse, Supreme Courts virtually never grant review of a decision unless it is published, even though it may very obviously be contrary to lots of existing precedent. There is no reason for a court that hears just over 100 cases a year to consider hearing 10,000 unpublished decisions, and the notation of “ordered unpublished” is a 99 and 44/100 percent guarantee that it will not be granted further review. Only on a message board would anyone be called a liar for saying it is a 100 percent guarantee. Although the federal system allows for multiple appeals before reaching the USSC, all appeals after the first are at the discretion of the judges, and so it is in many jurisdictions, including California.
This post goes to the heart of the problem of judges and lawyers who are not actually breaking the law by taking bribes and manufacturing false evidence. Simply put, it is a judge’s job to do justice and follow the rules. Both. Suggesting that doing two things at once is too much work is the mark of an idiot judge. It is an obscenity to suggest that it is only a game and nothing is at stake beyond rules. Many judges and lawyers sincerely fool themselves with this attitude. A judge is supposed to decide who is telling the truth and who is shading the truth and what the “truth” is and then use the rules to come to a result that enforces the rules, which have been set up to maximize society’s best interests in a given situation. You don’t know what the “given” situation is until the judge sorts out the different versions of the facts.
Juries in this country at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights assumed that juries would determine what the facts and the law were for each case. Juries are now only allowed to decide facts. “Strict constructionists” very much favor limiting the role of the jury to deciding only facts and betray their entire posture of principles by ignoring the proper function of juries. But that is another thread entirely.
It’s a tough fight because your ignorance is frankly bottomless and you keep digging. What you learned from class is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. It is true, counselor, that I am “not entirely wrong”, if by that you mean I am right and you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
That can only mean that you have no clue what you are talking about. The California Supreme Court does not accept cases for hearing that are unpublished. They don’t have a rule against it, but as a practical matter, they don’t. They hear slightly over 100 cases a year, and there are over 11,000 Court of Appeal decisions every year. Are 90 percent unpublished decisions? No, not even one of them is. As a practical matter, no appellate lawyer would tell her client that it was a wise investment to seek cert on an unpublished decision. http://www.nonpublication.com/lairdhtm.htm
That’s the second time you’ve used the “tempest in a teapot” metaphor. It is inappropriate. That it doesn’t affect even the two to four people sitting around teapot. That what that metaphor means. Nobody is affected. Well, in my state it affects over 10,000 parties every year. And for the ones who it does affect, let me offer this metaphor the Hild case proffers up: It’s worse than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. At least Mr. Hild losing his eye was a reckless accident. The Hild matter means that a court carefully considered his case and decided that they would deviate from the law and screw him out of any realistic consideration of his case being reviewed. Mr. Hild lost his eye and his case and his day in court and any recompense for being blind. That may be a tempest in a teapot where you sip tea, but it is a gross injustice to most human beings trying to live in a civilized society. That it potentially happens in 9/10s of all California appellate decisions every year (and in my opinion most of those it does happen in) is a lot of explaining done to families of litigants on why the system sucks. The lawyers that have to do the explaining get to move on, the litigants are just lost in the heavy seas of the judicial tea party.
You really don’t seem to know what you’re talking about. The whole point of writing a decision is to explain to those uninterested why the facts and the law required the result reached. Not to allow the judge(s) to ignore precedent to reward the party they prefer for “unusual reasons”. Common law requires the doctrine of “stare decisis”Precedent - Wikipedia to prevent exactly the arbitrariness that you are advocating. The only times stare decisis should be departed from is when the highest courts carefully consider the legal reasons that it is required. It is not for mid-level appellate courts to engage in on a daily basis.
It was one of several points that I raised as to why lawyers, judges and the legal system are in such disrepute. In my opinion, it is fundamental and systemic to
why the legal system is such an incredible burden to society in general. You cannot walk into a lawyer’s office and find out what the law will be in a given case with any degree of certainty, because most (9/10) of the supervision of the trial courts is without any real accountability. And if as an appellate judge, I could know that if the decision is going to be unpublished, I could wilfully ignore the consequences of sloppy work and go golfing or drinking instead, then I don’t take my work as seriously.
Look at California appellate decisions (and Supreme Court decisions) of 100 years ago and compare them to those of today. They were short, concise and brilliant pieces of writing. Sometime in the late 60s and early 70s they got to be long, convoluted and sloppy pieces of bureaucratic garbage. While the population of California has tripled and quadrupled, the number of appellate judges has remained static. There is far less per capita binding precedent than there used to be. Oh, and lots more litigation.
I didn’t draw a statistical conclusion from it. You said I did. That’s called a straw man. It was pretty obvious to me from a historical point of view that all three did it, but the distrust for the system let all but the most bizarre excuse off scot-free.
Again with the statistics. There are no studies of prosecutorial conduct. My eventual death will be “statistically” insignificant, but it will matter a great deal to the people named in my life insurance, and nobody else. I cannot dismiss the case of Benjamin Field as a statistical anomaly because investigations of prosecutorial conduct seldom take place. Certainly the innocent people he put in prison is not a statistical blip to those people and their families.
And the public trusts that it is applied correctly only to those who are guilty of the most heinous crimes. The public does not support the death penalty if the accused are not guilty, which is the case far too many times.
I didn’t say that the mere result adverse to my pleasure was an abuse. Nice straw man. Nor do I dispute that you have an opinion that abuse is not rampant. I disagree that enough studies have been done. Very few are. One death penalty abuse is enough to be too many. More than one exist. Dozens exist. It doesn’t bother you for statistical reasons. We get it.
I did not say that the lawyers are bad for defending bad people. I said lawyers are bad because they are able to convince themselves that doing their job is more important than doing the right thing. It’s why lawyers don’t care which side of the case they are arguing. It doesn’t even matter to them which side they’re on, because if it did, they couldn’t be lawyers.
There’s a reason that deceiving people without telling a literal lie, or finding a loophole in fine print that leads to some silly resolution is called “lawyering”.
Yes, and this is incredibly stupid, because doing their job in the vast, vast majority of cases, is the right thing. You sit here, happily enjoying the marvellous fruits of our justice system, secure in the knowledge that you will almost certainly not be locked up for something you didn’t do, and yet you simultaneously declare that the people who make it possible are intrinsically, inescapably evil because half of the work they do should not be done. And yet if lawyers did not defend people who they suspected of being in the wrong, then many, many innocent people would end up imprisoned. This is a point you utterly refuse to address. Your version of legal morality would lead to catastrophe. How, then, is it really moral?
Maybe they’re just more forward-thinking people than you, and can defend even those people they find distasteful because they know it’s for the greater good. Thank fuck they can, say I - if everyone thought like you, our entire system of justice would collapse around our ears. Oh, but wouldn’t we all be moral then. Never mind the miscarriages of justice, wouldn’t we all be nice people.
I doubt anyone is suggesting that there are not cases where it is right and appropriate that someone get compensation for a wrong done. This is to have an effect to mitigate the loss someone incurred and to punish the wrongdoers so it is in their interest to fix the problem/not engage in that behavior again.
I think we all remember cases where someone like (say) the auto industry found it cheaper to pay off a few million dollars to people getting hurt than to actually fix the underlying problem (it was cheaper). So now punitive damages can go sky high.
While that can make sense, we want to make it so financially painful to the other party that it behooves them to fix the actual problem, it has led to a nation of ambulance chasers.
IIRC (and I could be remembering this wrong) they had to pass laws/regulations to prevent attorneys from contacting individuals who had just experienced some loss within a certain time frame. It would happen a plane would crash (for example) and that very day the grieving family would be inundated with attorneys seeking to represent them. I believe in some cases the family found out a loved one was dead because an attorney called asking to represent them.
This has led to a culture in the US where if something goes wrong someone else must be to blame and they can get some money for it. Again, there are most certainly times when someone is at fault and they deserve to pay. But sometimes shit just happens and no one really is at fault but you can bet an attorney somewhere will be willing to find a scapegoat.
I am old enough to remember when people generally had a sense of “shit happens” and would not seek to sue the instant anything went wrong. I submit that our country is NOT better off in the current climate. Yet here we are. When looking around to see how we got here there is only one answer…lawyers.
Interestingly, it is rather difficult to win a malpractice case against an attorney. Funny how that works.
[sub]Interesting anecdote: A friend of mine just spent several months in the Philippines. She noted on a blog she was writing the miserable state of traffic control for cars (largely non-existent in rural areas despite fairly heavy use). The locals commented to her if they hit someone with their vehicle it is better for them to kill the person than to just hurt the person as it is cheaper to pay recompense and their funeral costs than it is to pay for their hospital bill. I know…not the US but I found the comment interesting in how laws can lead to perverse outcomes.[/sub]
Not really. Asshole does not equal malpractice. Just because something didn’t go your way does NOT necessarily mean that the lawyer committed malpractice. When they have, it’s usually fairly straightforward- my MIL’s first divorce lawyer blew it big time and broke several laws, and the case against him was not difficult to prove. YMMV, obviously.
That corruption is “rampant” is a statistical conclusion. If you don’t have studies to back you up, your shrill denunciations of an entire profession are built on sand.
I believe some studies have been done regarding innocence and the death penalty.
I believe you are wrong about the public opinion. Judges and politicians who oppose the death penalty are generally unpopular, even now, when we know that there is some number of innocent people being sentenced to death. Your quarrel here is not with lawyers or judges but with the public as a whole.
You implied it by using as examples cases whose results you disagree with. For your argument to be valid, you must show actual corrupt behavior.
Going on what my father told me about this when I asked him. He said it was rather difficult to prove an attorney committed malpractice mainly because being incompetent is not malpractice.
Attorneys have fallen asleep in court with nothing done to them. No malpractice, no disbarment/suspension, no new case for their under served client, no overturned verdict even when it was a capital case. (cite)
IMO my defense attorney falling asleep in court, during the trial, is malpractice to say the least.
A bit different and commenting on the defense side of the equation but I thought this quote was interesting and bears to some extent on your discussion (remember there are two sides to the judicial coin…prosecution/defense).
Fox news is ranting about lawyers picking the bones of AIG right now. They say lawyers should have their pay capped ,especially ones involved in bankrupt companies.Lawyers are a component in picking what companies survive. Lawyers are so evil.
Maybe not “capped”, as such, but I think the way the attorney’s pay is calculated needs a long look.
Imagine one attorney going after Chrysler for a faulty seatbelt and nets his/her client $1 million. That attorney will walk off with a $350,000 payday (give or take but something like that as I understand it).
Another attorney is after AIG. He gets each individual shareholder $1,000 in damages but there are (say) 50,000 shareholders. That attorney will see a $16,650,000 payday (again give or take).
Did one attorney work substantially harder than the other attorney to merit nearly 50x more pay? Which individual(s) the attorney was representing fared better monetarily?
Wasn’t there a stink about this in the state tobacco lawsuit cases? That since the awards were in the billions of dollars attorneys were walking off with staggering paydays? Were such colossal paydays truly merited?
I also might note that in the case of AIG the attorneys will be getting paid largely from the American taxpayer…aka you & me. I take some exception to that since I had literally zero to do with any of it (I am not nor ever have been an employee or shareholder in AIG).
The lawyers in corporations get tons of money. i never understood the reason they take millions out of a bankruptcy.I did not say I agreed with the TV show. It was on Fox after all. I do not intend to defend it.
My personal opinion that corruption and idiocy is not a statistical analysis. There are no generalized studies of corruption and lack of precedent in the legal field. Your conclusion that denunciations are inappropriate unless supported by statistical evidence is delusional. People are entitled to their opinions based on their experiences.
Indeed there have been some studies on the death penalty, an extraordinarily small area of the law. They have been cited in this thread. They show a dramatic failure to not prosecute the innocent, not incarcerate the innocent and not execute the innocent. Anyone relying on these “statistical” studies would be appalled at the usage of the death penalty. They prove the opposite of your thesis that there is nothing wrong with the legal system as pertains to the death penalty.
What you believe is up to you. I am well aware that the public supports the death penalty for those deserving of the death penalty. You haven’t cited anybody who is for the death penalty for innocent people as a mistake, even the “public as a whole”. Even if it were popular to support the death penalty for innocent people (which it most certainly is not popular), it is indefensible to support the application of the death penalty to innocent people for any reason. It nonetheless seems to be the basic thrust of your argument.
And it is in fact the job of prosecutors, lawyers and judges to make certain that the death penalty is not applied not innocent people. The fact that they do not succeed in the somewhat simple task of applying the death penalty to only the guilty is cause for condemnation.
Injustice in any case, moving back to the civil case of the blinding isn’t a matter of statistics to the people injured by the system. It hurts individuals who have come before the system to redress the wrongs done to them. The idea that we need not do better because it is a “tempest in a teapot” utterly ignores that it destroys the lives of so many litigants.
Well that isn’t quite how it works. The public hears that the jury awarded $1 million. For simplicity sake, the defendant pays it with a big check right away. The attorney is entitled to her percentage off the top because the contingency contract says one-third of the verdict. That’s $333,333. But the attorney has advanced the costs for expert witnesses, transcripts and other matters. Easily another $200,000. The medical providers and insurers had liens for treatment in the sum of $300,000, which the lawyer negotiates to $150,000 for the client. The client then gets $317,000 and change.
And the basis of opinions on anecdotes rather than representative samples may be fairly dismissed as hysteria.
Indeed there have been some studies on the death penalty, an extraordinarily small area of the law. They have been cited in this thread. They show a dramatic failure to not prosecute the innocent, not incarcerate the innocent and not execute the innocent. Anyone relying on these “statistical” studies would be appalled at the usage of the death penalty. They prove the opposite of your thesis that there is nothing wrong with the legal system as pertains to the death penalty.
It’s very simple. The public supports the death penalty. The public has not expressed support for any particular method of ensuring that the innocent are not sentenced to death. In fact, the one, best method for ensuring it–elimination of the death penalty–is unpopular. You can’t put this on judges and lawyers. If the public wants to change the standard for the imposition of the death penalty, then it is up to the public to pressure their legislatures.
And this is simply delusional. If it were so easy to know who is innocent and who isn’t, we wouldn’t need a justice system. If you want a death penalty, you have to accept a certain level of risk that some innocent people will be put to death. It’s unavoidable.
It is very relevant to the conclusions you are drawing, that corruption is “rampant” and that judges and lawyers as a whole are to be condemned. There’s a difference between a system that is less than perfect and could use some degree of reform and a system that is largely dysfunctional and demanding condemnation as a whole.
If you have a case for reforms, then present them. To leap from there to conclusions of rampant corruption is simply demagoguery.
If you have a case for rampant corruption, then you need to set forth your standards for “rampant” and then prove them with evidence. Anecdotes aren’t evidence that the system and everyone in it is corrupt.
And I might add that the vast majority of cases of inadequate representation in death penalty cases are the result of the public’s being unwilling to adequately pay for competent defense. Public defenders are very unpopular, especially in states like Texas, where the death penalty is very popular.
If not the judges and lawyers then who is responsible to see justice is done? A jury that the lawyers attempt to manipulate?
Prosecutors are incented to be “tough” on criminals. Sometimes a horrific crime occurs and the public wants to see someone hang for it. They are not especially particular who gets hung for it. Sure they want the actual perp caught but how do they know that it is the actual perp on trial? There is an assumption if the prosecutors felt they have a case then there must be a case and whoever it is must be guilty.
We know however how wrong this is. Illinois suspended the death penalty because so MANY people on death row were shown to actually be innocent when science caught up.
How did they get there? Of course occasionally mistakes will be made and here or there someone innocent will get caught. But THAT many people? Just “whoops!”?
Could it more be you have the likes of Burris who pushed a guy on death row that pretty much everyone felt was innocent? That DA’s are politically motivated and want to “be tough” so railroad whoever to get a good conviction record?
Where does justice in our justice system come from?
Remember, you have a constitutional right to due process, among other things. I cited up-thread how plea bargains undermine this. I cited up-thread the stark disparity between prosecutor and defense resources. I cited up-thread where PDs were sleeping during a capital case.
Don’t want to pay for it? Tough shit. It is a constitutional protection that is conveniently swept under the rug. I do not think, “we don’t feel like paying for it” should trump your fundamental rights.
It’s not judges and lawyers who don’t feel like paying taxes to uphold constitutional rights. It’s the general public. The problem you outline here is a problem of the American people as a whole, not a problem of American lawyers.